I’ve been quiet on here. Like, properly quiet. The kind of quiet where you start to wonder if the bloke who used to word-vomit his feelings onto the internet every few weeks has finally run out of things to say.
Nah. Still plenty to say. 🤣
It’s just… different now. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about why I’m not writing as much. Which is a bit of a mind-bender when you think about it. A whole article about silence. Very dramatic. Very me. 😅
Soo.. let me have a crack at it.
There are two things going on. And they’re both good things, weirdly. Which is not a sentence I expected to be writing when I started this whole justadad thing back when life had very thoroughly fallen apart.
The first one is this: I’m not drowning anymore.
For a long time — longer than I probably admitted at the time — writing was the life raft. It was where I put the grief, the guilt, the 3am ceiling-staring, the wtf-has-happened-to-my-life feelings that had no other place to go. I wrote because if I didn’t, all of it just sat there in my chest like a brick. Writing was how I processed. How I survived, honestly.
And I’m grateful for every single word of it. For you lot reading it. For the DMs and the “mate I feel this” comments that reminded me I wasn’t completely alone in the chaos.
But here’s the thing — and I say this with absolutely zero performance about it — I’m not in that place anymore. Life has shifted. Slowly, quietly, and without much fanfare (which is not very me, but here we are). I’m not chasing happiness like it’s something I lost and need to find again. I’m just… living it. Most days. The fishing trips. Cate. The new house that nearly broke me to build and now I can’t imagine not being in. Small things. Present things.
Gratitude is a word that gets absolutely flogged on the internet by people selling supplements and morning routines, so I hate to use it. But it’s the right one. The centre of gravity has shifted — from grief to grateful. Not because grief is gone. It isn’t. Renee is still woven through everything, always will be. But she’s not a wound I’m writing from anymore. She’s just… part of who I am now. And who I’m still becoming, I reckon.
When the well of pain isn’t overflowing, you write less. That’s just the truth.
The second thing is a bit more complicated.
Grace and Albi are older.
Grace is nearly an adult — which is terrifying and brilliant in equal measure — and Albi isn’t far behind. And here’s where I have to be honest, even if it makes me look like a bit of an idiot: I hadn’t really thought hard enough about the fact that my stories about them are actually THEIR stories.
For years I wrote about the chaos of raising them. The funny stuff, the hard stuff, the moments where I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (most of them). And for the most part, when they were younger, they either didn’t know or didn’t care. Or both.
But they’re not little kids anymore who don’t know what Dad’s blog is.
They read. They have opinions. They have mates who could read it. And they are — quite rightly — starting to go, “Hey, maybe don’t put my life on the internet without asking me, yeah?”
Which. Fair enough.
I don’t love it, if I’m honest. Those stories — the parenting moments, the teenage chaos, the ordinary Tuesday stuff that somehow becomes everything — that was the heart of a lot of what I wrote. It was funny and it was real and it felt important to share.
But it’s their life. Not just mine. And at some point, the rawness I pride myself on can’t come at someone else’s expense — especially not my own kids.
So I’m figuring out a new shape for this. What justadad looks like when the “dad” part of it has to stay a little more private. When the kids aren’t raw material anymore, but actual people with their own right to their own stories.
Maybe I’m talking to myself here. But I suspect some of you lot — the ones who’ve been writing about your kids for years and suddenly find them side-eyeing you at the dinner table — might get it.
It’s a strange kind of growing up. Theirs, obviously. But mine too.
Soo.. I’m still here. I’ll keep showing up on these pages when I’ve got something worth saying that’s actually mine to say. The voice hasn’t changed. The life has. And honestly? That’s not a bad problem to have.
Peace, love and mung beans. ✌️
